


Soft as Chalk

by sensescapes



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Black Mirror Episode: s03e04 San Junipero, M/M, Nostalgia Therapy, Old Man Yells at iCloud, Platonic winhyuck, Strangers to Lovers, Time Travel, Virtual Reality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-29
Updated: 2019-07-29
Packaged: 2020-07-23 00:15:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20000824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sensescapes/pseuds/sensescapes
Summary: San Junipero is a party town. From the Quagmire in the mountains, the little Bays scattered around town, down to the rocky shore, there’s a scene for everyone. A utopia for most, an abomination for few. It’s what you want it to be, always—a heaven on earth.There is nowhere else Sicheng would rather be, and that terrifies him.





	Soft as Chalk

**Author's Note:**

> Thank U to C & my devil friends for telling me to "go write".
> 
> If you havent seen a single episode of Black Mirror, don’t let that deter you from reading this fic!! (The series is anthological anyway, so you would only need to watch the San Junipero episode to maybe understand this better. Or maybe just visit the episode’s wikipedia page) <3

They’re seated round an oak dining table. It’s new—well, new to Sicheng but old news to whomever had donated it to the charity shop he likes to visit. He makes eyes at Donghyuck who snorts rudely and when a few heads turn away from the gaping black hole to raise a brow in question, he says, “sinuses” in that  _ what can ya do?  _ way. They’ve just moved on to the main course, something less soupy than usual with fresh baked bread. The aforementioned black hole, Johnny Suh is throwing everyone un-subtle panicked looks as he projectile word-vomits all over his guest.

Out of the corner of his eye he sees Taeyong shift, not one for second-hand embarrassment. “So, Yuta, what do you do when you aren’t being…” Taeyong brings his fingers up into air quotes, “let’s say ‘physically displaced’ by the Johnnys of the world?”

Johnny groans but gnaws at the bone he’s thrown, nonetheless, and slumps back into his seat. Before Taeyong cut him off he’d been halfway through a story about last weekend, clumsily re-enacting something with a lot of jabbing elbows.

“Uh, I work at a clay café in Hout Bay.”

Sicheng lifts his head. “Clay?” This gets everyone’s attention. He puts his palm to his chest and says, “plasticine” like it’s his name.

Yuta tilts his head a fraction, a half smile on his lips as he points behind Sicheng’s head. “Yes,” Sicheng says, because he knows what hangs framed on the wall. “Plasticine portrait of a scamp.”

A soft clink as Ten tips his glass against Sicheng’s. “A scamp I am.”

“Is it your profession? Or a hobby?” Yuta holds Sicheng’s gaze with his weird intense eyes Sicheng had been trying to avoid all evening.

Sicheng drops his eyes to his plate. “Just a hobby. Not a very recent one.”

Hacking crudely on a crust of bread, Donghyuck wheezes out, “And why are we hiding behind euphemisms? Just say Johnny capoeira-kicked Yuta into the sea.”

“So, what do you think?” Johnny asks him later, when they’re stacking plates in his kitchenette. Ten had been the first to leave, greedy to retreat into his bubble of comfortable quiet just a few houses down the beach.

“Hm?” Sicheng is trying to braid Donghyuck’s hair from one ear to the other. Johnny points a thumb towards the front door. “About Yuta? What do you think of him?”

Sicheng shrugs. “What’s to think?”

He goes to close the kitchen curtain and sees Taeyong and Yuta leaning against the tree outside their place. Taeyong is smoking a roach and talking with a friendly smile. Yuta is looking at his hands, turning them upside down and then downside up, studying the crescent creases of his fingers and the way the skin pulls taut over his knuckles when he makes a fist. When he looks up, it’s into Sicheng’s eyes. Yuta smiles with perfect teeth, his hair all in his eyes. By now a veteran, Sicheng knows what that stirring in his chest is. Knows that tune by heart.

Clearing up the last of the cutlery and wrapping up the rest of Taeyong’s flop casserole, Johnny muses, “I guess what I’m trying to say is he reminds me of you.”

San Junipero is perfect this time of year. The sea salt breeze parts his hair through the middle, pushing it out of his face. His feet are frozen lead and he can barely feel the jagged drag of sea shells across his soles. Underneath him, a wave retreats into the body of water. Another succession of small waves fold and foam like raw pork belly to play along the shore, while the runt of it is left to soak into the sand. A pair of feet stop and sink into the malleable sand beside him.

“That’s a jacket,” Jaehyun cracks, crouching down. He’s shirtless with a shark tooth hanging off his neck.

Sicheng puts his weight into his palms behind him, crossing his legs in front of him.

“God, I wouldn’t want to know you in the ‘70s,” Jaehyun huffs a laugh. Below his windbreaker, goosebumps raise on the skin of Sicheng’s arms, but Jaehyun seems unaffected by the sharp south-eastern wind picking up. Sicheng bites; speaks in an amused whisper. “Bell bottoms, baby.”

Jaehyun takes his in. “Come to the Quagmire tonight.” He doesn’t ask, so Sicheng doesn’t agree. Not anymore. As a rule. Sicheng smiles at the way the late evening sunset gambols in the never-still ocean, shooting glimmers of light onto the surface. It’s as much a  _ No _ as he’ll give. When Sicheng is back in his room not minutes later, he stands before the floor-length mirror admiring his jacket. There’d been no bite in Jaehyun’s comment, but Sicheng had responded knife-edged, in posture and tone. In the way he’d stood up out of the sea’s icy embrace and walked off without as much as a sigh; much less than Jaehyun is used to, but Sicheng supposes he’ll adapt to this, too—thick skinned in the icy breeze in nothing but small swim shorts.

He has not unpacked. Cluttered around are cardboard boxes full of memorable miscellanea, bric-a-brac he’d convinced himself he needed sometime, eventually, one day. The eggshell walls and lightwood floor make a nice, neutral carcass of a home, but Sicheng’s loud, ugly things don’t fit here. He likes them best in his real home, the one with neighbours on all four sides of it, a little ugly, a lot quiet. The only thing he has out on display is a photograph of a six-year-old girl cross-legged in a heart-shaped patch of grass. The dark wood frame is carved into 3D roses—or at the very least, curves and crescents coming together to resemble them—and Sicheng had worked so hard on it.

He regrets leaving the beach. One look through the blinds shows Jaehyun no longer where Sicheng had left him further along the shore, crouched in the shallow water looking like he’d lost. Taking up residence on the shore directly in front of his house, he sees strips of a lean body, shirtless and spiking a volleyball across the beach with ease. The man wrings his hands through brown hair longer than Sicheng’s, about to his chin. He’s got a square jaw and a stern, concentrated knit to his eyebrows. It immediately strikes Sicheng as sexy, the way he half-heartedly hooks strands of hair behind his ear and lets a few hang into his eyes.

He serves a ball the opposing side does not catch, and a wide smile splits the stony endeavour of the face. Sicheng can’t bring himself to look away from how the skin around his eyes crease at his momentary delight; the lines around his mouth. Sicheng feels an abrupt and infectious sense of liveliness at the sight. Everyone else he’s met here has been as good as dead.

Though Sicheng had thought it impossible from this distance, from the whole of him obscured by the blinds save for his eyes, Yuta, still held in the last fleeting, freeing moments of a smile, turns and catches his gaze in an instant.

“Neon,” Sicheng whispers, wide-eyed. He opens his eyes to a different view. Through his wide bedroom window: high tide splintered against the face of smooth rock.

He sees the woman see him and he immediately turns from the window, then feels silly about being so obviously caught. He turns tentatively back towards the glass, watches her approaching figure move past the A Y CA F É painted pink on the storefront window.

“Hi, good evening, how’s it going?” She stands in the doorway and smiles at Sicheng like he isn’t a huge fool. Nice of her to think that.

“Oh, no, um. Hi. Are you still open?” Sicheng is reminded of winter evenings leaning face too close to the fire place. His cheeks are burning.

She nods with a smile. Her fingers are covered in wet clay. “Yep, all through ‘til midnight.”

“Okay. Thank you. Goodbye,” Sicheng turns and takes long strides down the street. Now she’s seen him. Now she knows. He’s a fool.

“Okay, what about…this!” Donghyuck models into the living room and does a quick spin. Pat Benatar’s  _ Hit Me With Your Best Shot  _ plays on the portable cassette player in Taeyong’s lap.

“Hmm…this doesn’t feel like you. It feels more like Taeyong.” Johnny comments.

Mid-pose, having just shrugged off his thick, studded and spiked leather jacket to drape it around his shoulder coolly, Donghyuck deflates. He’s in an opaque red mesh shirt, the jacket, green tartan pants and platform boots. Johnny’s not wrong.

“He’s not wrong,” Sicheng voices, and Donghyuck huffs and walks back into his room.

It’s just past 8pm and they’re running out of time to hit the good bars before they’re crowded and uncomfortable to move around in. Sinking deeper into the couch, Taeyong lets his head fall back and his eyes close. There’s a slow smile creeping onto his face. “Man,” he says, voice low and laced thick in nostalgia. “this song…”

A knocking sound, two loud raps on the wall, and Taeyong reluctantly changes the tape. Donghyuck walks slowly back into the room, hands on his hips and chin in the air, to  _ Like A Virgin _ . Sicheng jumps out of his seat, “okay, let’s go.” Taeyong rises from the couch and drops the cassette player in Johnny’s lap, who pushes it into Donghyuck’s arms in his rush to leave.

“What?! So this is it?” Donghyuck slides the cassette player across the table then audibly winces as it lands with a crack on the tile, the tape spilling out. He does a little dance, half of him wanting to break into a jog to catch up with everyone who’s left, but manners win out and he doubles back to scoop the player off the ground and throw it into his open bedroom door, smashing it into no less than a thousand smithereens on the point of his dresser. A long howl rips from his throat as he turns on his heel and skids across the tile out the front door, already sweating through his bandana. “Guys???”

A woman wearing stacks of brightly coloured beads shimmies a circle around him as Sicheng steps into the last hours of 1987. New Year’s Eve welcomes him in the form of a sticky midsummer evening where he feels too hot in his denim shorts, and there’s the occasional sea-salt breeze that cools the sweat on the back of his neck. He’s walking slow, letting the world happen. All around him, people are laughing, singing and running around. He loves the feeling of being young and stomping the world under his feet, buzzing with the kind of energy specific to night-time. He misses it—misses it as it’s happening. Another year on its deathbed.

The gang calls him out for slowing them down. Donghyuck turns back to stick his tongue out at him as they run on ahead, into a bar called  _ Tucker’s  _ that’s thrumming with music. He smells Jaehyun’s spicy cologne before he sees him.

“Happy new year,” Jaehyun breathes out, winded like he’d just run over. Sicheng turns around and meets his smiling face. It’s sheepish, Sicheng thinks. Placating—smoothing over two weeks ago’s missteps.

Sicheng picks up his pace. “Happy new year.”

Jaehyun is matching all his strides. He smirks at the side of Sicheng’s face. “So, who you kissing at midnight?”

“Oh my god!” Sicheng huffs and it’s kind of embarrassing he let Jaehyun get to him like that, so he fast walks the rest of the way to the bar. It’s packed with dozens of others wearing the same bright beads, laughing, talking loudly, and dancing on each other. The entire place is strewn with reflective banners and balloons.  _ Happy New Year _ , they read in curling font. There’s Taeyong sitting with his back towards the door at the bar counter, so Sicheng stomps over.

“God! Have you ever regretted something so fucking much, oh my f-ing God! I didn’t know you could feel regret here, is that part of the deluxe package? I might’ve been wrongfully billed, Jesus Christ!” Sicheng plants down onto the stool and drops his head to the counter. When he lifts it, there’s confetti stuck to his forehead. And also,  _ not  _ Taeyong next to him.

Yuta’s mouth moves, but Sicheng is nearly up to his ears in quick hot embarrassment so he doesn’t hear anything he says. “What was that?”

“I couldn’t make out anything after, ‘ _ oh my f-ing God! _ ’” Yuta yells over the music.

Sicheng, dumb as the day he was born, says, “You’re wearing Taeyong’s jacket.”

Yuta frowns and looks down at the white cropped denim jacket he’s wearing.

“I mean you’re wearing the same jacket as Taeyong, so I came over here because I thought you were him.” Sicheng’s looking somewhere below Yuta’s eyes. He’s never met someone with such an intimidating face.

Laughing, Yuta flags down the barman and glances at Sicheng out of the corner of his eye. “Then you must be disappointed.”

Out of anyone else’s mouth, that would’ve made Sicheng’s eyes roll. Now, he just stares.

“Another rum and coke, and…” Yuta strains to be heard over Robbie Nevil’s  _ C’est La Vie _ . He looks to Sicheng fully now. It’s an invitation to stay. Sicheng is still staring at the soft curve of Yuta’s smile as he says, “rock shandy,” just to have something to clink his rings against. The bartender leaves with a nod.

Its around 4 hours ‘til midnight. “Any New Years resolutions?” Yuta asks. He laughs at the responding frown on Sicheng’s face. “What? You don’t believe in them?”

Sicheng makes a show of rolling his eyes, settling into the familiar focus of conversation. “I’m too old for resolutions.”

It wasn’t that funny, maybe at all, but Yuta throws his head back with laughter. Sicheng can’t help smiling at the sight. Staring like this, at the column of Yuta’s neck, his jaw, he must look like a creep. Feels like one too when someone comes up behind him and puts both their hands on his shoulders, startling him out of his daze.

“Heyo!” It’s Donghyuck, craning his neck over Sicheng’s shoulder to make an ugly face at him. “Howdy do?” he asks Yuta, draping himself fully over Sicheng’s back.

Sicheng leans his cheek against Donghyuck’s warm one. “Are you drunk? We just got here.”

“Drunk on life, baby!” Donghyuck sways them out of tune to the music before the song changes. “Oh, what a downer!”

“You love  _ Girlfriend in a Coma _ ,” Johnny walks up and flicks Donghyuck lightly on the ear. He takes a sip of his beer, but it’s just a ruse to tip his head back and shake his hair out of his face in the way that makes him look kind of hot.

Johnny angles towards Yuta, who’s been sat with his elbow propped on the counter top, chin in palm, watching Sicheng and Donghyuck in amusement. “Hey,” Johnny smiles, eyes crinkling. Sicheng knows smitten when he sees it.

Maybe Yuta does too, but he doesn’t show. Instead, he smiles lightly up at Johnny, his nose scrunching ever so slightly, and says, “Hey, it’s been a while.” Johnny breathes out a laugh and takes a tiny step closer to the counter, to separate from the slow-dancing crowd and into Yuta’s space. Sicheng takes a large gulp of his drink. “Let’s go dance,” he whispers in Donghyuck’s ear.

“At this  _ funeral _ ?” Donghyuck yells in the direction of the DJ, all the way across the room.  _ Girlfriend in a Coma  _ is in its last few seconds. Sicheng stands and pulls Donghyuck with him into the thick crowd. The song changes and Donghyuck lets out a shrill scream and shimmies his shoulders to the heavy beat. Sicheng recognises the tune in an instant and tries not to think of where he remembers it from. He closes his eyes and finds the rhythm, mirroring Donghyuck’s ridiculous moves. After a while, Sicheng can only single Donghyuck out amongst the dancing bodies by the big bow on his head. He dances with Taeyong for a while until they begin to draw a crowd and their admiring glances make Taeyong shy.

A solid chest presses up against Sicheng’s back. Cologne that irritates his nose. No surprise here, but Sicheng is in such a good mood he lets his lips feather briefly across Jaehyun’s jaw as he leans back to shout in his ear. “Take a fucking hint!”

Jaehyun presses closer to say, “I think we have a real connection, us two.”

He sounds earnest and urgent, like he thinks they’re wasting time playing cat and mouse. Sicheng twines his fingers in Jaehyun’s and brings Jaehyun’s arms over his shoulders, leaning all his weight into the embrace. “No, what we  _ had  _ was  _ fun _ . You know I’m not looking for anything serious,” he twists to face Jaehyun’s intense stare. Sicheng thumbs at one of Jaehyun’s dimples, feels the soft skin of his cheek in the rest of his palm. “You need to stop looking at me like you ready to settle down and have kids.”

The intensity melts off Jaehyun’s face. “I never had kids,” he boasts with a smirk.

Sicheng thinks of the photograph in his foreign room, propped up on a side table and angled towards the window, beautiful girl all in blue, looking out at the sea. He pushes out of Jaehyun’s arms. With an empty smile and a pat to Jaehyun’s chest, Sicheng turns to leave. “Good for you.”

“Come here often?”

A slow glance over his shoulder, then Sicheng leans back against the large rock, lumpy and taller than he is. He says nothing in response, just gestures up towards the perfect disc moon.

Yuta takes two more steps and stands right beside him. Nothing overbearing, just a presence next to him, hands in his pockets not even trying to lean against the rock. Like he’ll leave if Sicheng would rather be alone. “It’s so nice out here. It doesn’t feel like New Year’s Eve.”

“It feels like,” Sicheng can’t find the voice to say  _ like old times _ . He drops his gaze briefly to the face of Yuta’s wristwatch. 10:16 PM. When he looks up, Yuta is staring at him.

“I’m not interested in Johnny.”

“Oh?” Sicheng breathes out. “And who are you interested in?” it feels a lot like  _ courting _ . Like  _ old times _ . God.

They hold gazes awhile, each one seemingly waiting for the other to speak. Sicheng doesn’t feel in the mood for talking. Instead, he leans in closer until their shoulders nearly touch, and he reaches out to loosely circle his fingers around Yuta’s wrist. He does so tentatively, not out of nerves or shyness, but so Yuta can watch and reject the action, if he wants to. When Yuta twists his hand in Sicheng’s grip, Sicheng moves to back away, but Yuta twists so they’re palm-to-palm, and he slots their fingers together. A soft laugh bubbles out of Sicheng’s throat as Yuta tugs him just that bit closer, so they’re touching from shoulder to hands intertwined.

Kissing a stranger is easy as anything. Sicheng had licked his lips before leaning forward, so the kiss is wet from the jump. A few soft closed mouth kisses, just to feel each other out, before Yuta takes the initiative and licks into his mouth. Yuta guides them backwards so he’s leaning against the rock and Sicheng could kind of cage him in if he wanted.

“Can I walk you home?” Yuta pants out after they finally part.

They’re not far from it, but Sicheng nods and pushes off the boulder, trying to bite down a smile. As they walk, past the rocky shore, up a sandy pathway and then more sand, everywhere, as common as tar on road, Yuta is nothing but patient; he keeps his hands in his pockets and lets their elbows touch. Their soft conversation remains surface-level. Yuta doesn’t ask  _ so, what’s your story?  _ and Sicheng doesn’t confess anything like  _ I have six weeks left to live. _

The white wood exterior of the beach house causes Sicheng to hesitate. In all the weeks he’s been here, the musical beds he’s played, he’d never brought anyone back to his own place. It’s awkward living with three other people, and the boxes of a real, sobering life piled all around his room. The thought brings him whiplash and he turns on his heels to the house next to theirs, different only in size. Yuta gives him a questioning look that comes off exasperated, eyebrows furrowed and lips slightly pursed, as Sicheng walks in through the unlocked door into a vacant house. Moonlight floods the center of the room through the patio doors. It’s smaller than the Sicheng-Donghyuck-Taeyong-Johnny situation next door, vacant save for the dozens of cardboard boxes everywhere, haphazardly unpacked. Dust stills in the air from the move—or the almost; hesitant move—into the new home. Sicheng’s heart jumps up into his throat the same time Yuta lifts a photo frame perched on the box closest to him. He runs his thumb along the intricate rose design.

“You were a cute baby,” Yuta says. Sicheng, who always has something to say, until someone reaches under his jacket with a surprise chest punch or worse, a hug, feels his mouth twitch, hardly a smile. He walks over to the patio doors and looks out at the sea.

“Hey,” Yuta reaches out, thumbing at Sicheng’s jacket sleeve. He gives a gentle tug, and Sicheng lets the jacket slip off his shoulder. All clingings of sentimentality fall to the floor as Yuta ghosts fingertips up Sicheng’s arm and steps closer in the process. Like this, Sicheng notices he’s a little taller than Yuta, a little broader too. Moonlight cuts off the front half of the room where they’d entered, and in the other corner, half the bed is as far as the light touches, like a spotlight anticipating the moves of an actor on stage. Outside, a couple bouts of premature fireworks go off and light the room in flash moments of orange then green. Sicheng leans forward to taste the tequila on Yuta’s tongue. Yuta leans into it immediately, happy to be led as Sicheng wraps a hand lightly around his jaw and steers them in the direction of the bed. They fit together as close as they can, Sicheng’s arms over Yuta’s shoulders with fingers scratching lightly at the hair at Yuta’s nape. Yuta smooths warm hands up and down Sicheng’s back under his shirt and they stumble onto the bed. Something like butterflies unfurl from their long long chrysalis in Sicheng’s chest and he thinks he’s on the cusp of a big mistake.

Yuta reaches down, and with warm fingertips, feathers lightly over Sicheng’s cheek. A whisper, “Would you believe me if I said you’re the most beautiful person I’ve ever met?”

A burst of laughter, breathy and delighted forces out of Sicheng’s mouth. He’s sitting on the back porch where the backyard is a busy beach just around the corner of midnight. Yuta sits two steps above him, bracketing Sicheng’s frame with his knees. They’re in nothing but cotton robes Sicheng had pulled from one of the cardboard boxes. Yuta laughs when—and because—Sicheng laughs, a soft, amused giggle. He reaches forward to stroke the tips of Sicheng’s ears between his forefingers and thumbs, feeling the ways they’re shaped different.

“You believe me,” Yuta says, and Sicheng can hear he’s smiling—can see it burned in the back of his eyelids when he closes his eyes, leans back into the warm embrace and listens to the sounds of people littered all over the beach, excited about what 1988 could be. Even during the week when Sicheng has a break from all of this, when it’s often just him and his roommate, Jeno—playing dominos until it gets too easy to decipher the cards in the other player’s hand—he thinks about that smile. So big, Sicheng thinks he could count all Yuta’s teeth. But that very first night they’d met, after Johnny sheepishly introduced him as  _ the guy I knocked over while doing capoeira,  _ and Yuta’s nose had scrunched up as he’d averted his eyes and smiled in an unlawful ratio of sexy to shy, Sicheng couldn’t remember what comes after 2. He can see the golds, peaches and light brown plasticine he hadn’t touched in months but had brought out specially to see if he could smudge them into each other and recreate that first smile; preserve it.

“You believe me, because it’s true,” Yuta says, and they share another laugh.

“How can you still talk like that?” Sicheng asks, sounding appropriately jaded for the hard years he’s lived; the weeks that remain.

“Like what?”

There’s still amusement in Yuta’s voice, and Sicheng wonders what he does during the week, if he has a roommate, too, or lives alone. If he’s thinking of a permanent move to San Junipero. Sicheng thinks of a dozen different things like, maybe Yuta reads the Tuesday newspaper and drinks tea. Maybe he’s not like Sicheng and gets out a lot.

In the distance, all along the beach, people are lining up fireworks, and a loud backwards-counting chant has begun.  _ Like what? _ “Like…” Sicheng is trying for the truth but not in so many words. “Like time can stop forever.”

“Because it does,” Yuta convinces, and Sicheng thinks back to feeling like he’s onstage in a play. “Every weekend. Just for us.” There’s that smile lacing his words again, sharpening them into Cupid arrows aimed straight at Sicheng’s heart. A furious, embarrassed blush creeps along his cheeks at the bizarre thought—god, he hasn’t felt this dramatic in a long time. He tilts his head backwards to give Yuta an exaggerated look of disgust.

But Yuta’s attention is elsewhere. Mesmerised, he points to the sky as the first string of fireworks erupt on  _ 6…5…4… _ , “look at the colours.”

Sicheng’s got the best view of the solid curve of his jaw, the slope of his nose, the plush of his lips as they part in awe at the light show. He sees the reds, blues, yellows and greens reflect in Yuta’s eyes. Shortly after  _ 3,  _ a bunch yell  _ 2 and a half  _ and cut through the uniform chant. On 2, Yuta screams along, laughter bubbling out of him, and Sicheng has the fleeting, bold fonted thought that he does not want to die. Yuta tears his focus away from the fireworks and meets Sicheng’s gaze with unguarded fondness and soft eyes. On 1, dread sinks like a jagged stone to the pit of Sicheng’s stomach.

Someone sneaks up behind him, jabs him in the side.

“Howzit?” Yuta tips his chin up in greeting as Donghyuck keeps pace beside him.

“Cool cool,” Donghyuck says. Yuta hums in acknowledgement and keeps walking. He’d hoped Donghyuck hadn’t noticed them crossing paths on Yuta’s way back from the beach, but here they are, shoulders brushing occasionally as they hustle side-by-side towards shelter. They turn onto the corner just across from  _ Tucker’s  _ where a group of party people singing  _ This Is How We Do It _ rush past and walk them off the sidewalk. “Why are you out in the rain without an umbrella?” Donghyuck asks.

“You don’t have one either.”

“True, but I live right there,” he points back towards the direction they came, to the strip of beach where Yuta had just been. Donghyuck raises his hood over his head belatedly, rainwater already dripping from his bangs. He pulls the strings taught around his face. “So, I was just gonna sprint the distance.”

“But here you are.”

Donghyuck nods and looks at him funny from inside his cocoon. “You look like you could use the company.”

Fuck it—if this guy Yuta barely knows thinks they’re familiar enough to be obnoxious with each other, then he’ll ask. “Do you—is he here?” the words crumble out his mouth. He clears his throat as inconspicuously as he can, which is not at all, before he clarifies who he means. “Sicheng.”

And maybe they aren’t as foreign to each other as Yuta thought, because Donghyuck appears no less capable of masking his emotions as realization crosses his features, and then, exactly what Yuta thinks he deserves, ill-concealed pity.

“I haven’t seen him in weeks,” Donghyuck laughs but it means nothing. He pushes fingers under his hood to scratch at his forehead. “To be fair, he’s not all that into the ‘90s,” Donghyuck slows to a stop and gives Yuta a calculated look before continuing to speak, slower, like Yuta has passed a test and unlocked a clue. “You should try the 2000s maybe.”

Yuta thinks of Kalk Bay in the fresh new ’88 where he’d expected to see Sicheng queued up at the tiny vegan ice cream place; ’95 in his jnco jeans he’d thought were a riot and wanted to get Sicheng’s opinion on; the thick cloak of adrenaline, lust and just pure rage at the grimy Quagmire club in 1970, and that Jaehyun guy who had looked at him like they have something in common. Donghyuck keeps making eyes at the beach behind them. Yuta can tell he wants to leave, but he doesn’t really care about being awkward.

San Junipero is a party town. From the Quagmire in the mountains, the little Bays scattered around town, down to the rocky shore, there’s a scene for everyone. A utopia for most, an abomination for few. It’s what you want it to be, always—a heaven on earth. Yuta had re-read the brochure so many times he’s memorised it. Before coming here, he’d been excited about just how much drinking and partying he could get into with no strings attached. One night in ’87 had sobered him up to the life faster than he’d expected.

“Sicheng’s weird about this place,” Donghyuck says, backing away, disappearing into the dark of the evening. “He really, really, doesn’t want to love it.”

“Is it okay if I already invited Jaehyun? We just bumped into each other and started talking and it came out!”

“I won’t be here, so.”

Taeyong twists around, his blue-yellow drink nearly sloshing over the glass rim. “What? It’s my birthday.”

There are many words that line themselves up in Sicheng’s head in response, most of them softer and more honest than what he actually says. “This place isn’t real to me like it is for you, T. You—this is your  _ home _ . I feel like I’ve been overstaying.”

“You’re always welcome. You’ve basically moved in, already.” Taeyong rushes out and then tries to laugh off his eager honesty.

“My things are all in boxes. I didn’t even say what I wanted to bring, it’s just a bunch of random shit that hurts to look at.”

Taeyong places a hand over Sicheng’s own where it drums restlessly on the bar. “I’d like if you stayed.”

Sicheng looks up, into the neutral look on Taeyong’s face, emotion only betrayed by the softness of his eyes as he regards an old friend. “I’d rather die,” Sicheng says. At least that makes Taeyong smile.

At the Quagmire, Jaehyun is easy to find. Dancing pressed up against a metal cage, with an enthusiasm like it’s his last night on earth.

“You’re back,” Jaehyun smiles at him sideways, breathless and sweaty from exertion.

“Soft spine,” Sicheng replies.

“Well, how’ve you been?” Jaehyun moves into his space, grinding hip to hip. Somewhere behind him, someone calls Sicheng’s name and whoops three times though he can’t recognize the face. It smells like sweat and feels like a mistake—but a small one, one he can handle.

Sicheng says, “Dying,” and Jaehyun whoops back, three times. He smiles at Sicheng’s scowl. When did dying become a good thing?

Its 8pm summer, and the sun stubbornly refuses to set for another hour. There are couplings and groups scattered along the shore and dotting the rocky areas; making the most of the stretching day. Sicheng spreads out on a big ridged rock far enough from the shore to meet the waves in their crest. The rock is slimy and smooth to the touch, hard to balance on. Sicheng thinks to himself,  _ I do not want to be moved _ , and when the next wave comes, low-tide but strong, seeping into the fabric of his clothes—he isn’t. He spreads out more, keeps his feet as far as possible in a middle split. Music reaches his ear from a seaside bar and the melody feels right for the moment. He feels light and limitless, young with the world under his feet where he plants them flat onto the rock. There is nowhere else Sicheng would rather be, and that terrifies him.

It’s nothing like the ephemeral grips of previous weekends when he’d get home past midnight and reflect longingly on a night of partying and youth, togetherness and great fucking disco—when he’d be moved enough to get out his notebook and jot down a line that had been stuck in his head all night as he weaved from bar to bar to the Quagmire:  _ they say in heaven / love comes first _ ; or a conviction:  _ I don’t think half anyone here is alive in the way they try to convince themselves they are. _

It’s hard to get down to the ocean from Sicheng’s real home, so he rarely ever bothers. But when he’s out here, he’ll fill hours reacquainting himself with the feeling of the waves through his fingers. Every weekend in the seaside town is starting to feel like a crutch holding him up until he folds back into the reality of the week. San Junipero is a party town, from the Quagmire built into the underside of a mountain down to the rocky, unpredictable shore, there’s a scene for everyone. But these kinds of parties are short-lived, meticulously constructed to guarantee pleasure for just how many hours it takes; flashy lights and gimmicks, a fraction of the real thing, until, of course, you want the real thing—you stop going back home, and a few hours every weekend turns into however long you can stand the party crowd.

Sicheng told himself he wouldn’t even consider it. He’d stepped into San Junipero for the first time several weeks ago, only a little nervous, with the confidence that he’ll step out the same. He’s just passing through. But it’s getting easier to find concessions—he doesn’t have to go near any of the bars or clubs when he can spend his hours floating on a bed-sized rock in the sea, just another extension of the earth. Another terrifying thought: Sicheng thinks he could do this forever.

Which is why, by 2000, Sicheng holds onto the foolish hope that Yuta has forgotten about him.

“Come here often?” his voice after all this time has the same effect as the biting southeaster wind on Sicheng’s cheeks.

It’s been three weeks and Sicheng has thought about no one else, since. Not even falling back into something with Jaehyun could have prepared him for that smile on Yuta’s face—close-lipped and precious, like he’s more happy to see Sicheng than he’s happy to let on. The slight scrunch of his nose. He looks pleased. Patient. Like the past three weeks had been no time at all.  _ Like time can stop forever _ , Sicheng thinks Yuta would say. Remembers him saying it.  _ It does; just for us _ .

“Only every Saturday,” Sicheng says. He reaches out a hand and lets Yuta, standing on the rock beside his, pull him up. “You smell like sea salt and brine,” Sicheng says into the tiny space between them. Yuta laughs, an extension of the sea.

“I have a resolution,” Sicheng is giddy all over the places he’d been porous with dread moments before.  _ The Big Mistake  _ has turned out to be a lot more things than he’d previously anticipated; the root mistake being coming to San Junipero in the first place. But that was weeks ago, and he’s here now, and he has a resolution. “Pottery,” he says before Yuta can get a word in.

Yuta lights up. “We could go to the café?” When Sicheng nods, he reaches to twine their fingers together.

At the clay café, the woman Sicheng had embarrassed himself in front of isn’t there, but Yuta still tells him that he’d been inside too, stock-taking, and had seen Sicheng through the window. It’s not as embarrassing anymore.

“I want to make Taeyong something. It’s his birthday soon. A big one.”

“Oh?” Yuta hums, preparing the equipment, breaking off a big mound of speckled clay. “Will he be making a soup?”

Sicheng laughs and almost says,  _ actually, he’s making beef stew _ , but it’s the same as,  _ yes _ .

“So, what do you have in mind?” Yuta pulls up a chair beside him and claps his hands together. He’s wearing his work apron and looks eager to help. “Soup bowl,” Sicheng says just to see him throw his head back and laugh.

So, they’d finished the bowl. It’s big and white with brown and blue speckles and Sicheng had smoothed out most of it with Yuta’s fingers between his own, and it has to be fired now and Sicheng can’t wait for that and then he can come back next week and paint it then, whatever, now he cares more about Yuta’s tongue licking up the side of his neck and his hand wiggling down the front of Sicheng’s shorts. They’re shoved into the STAFF ONLY toilet stall at the café but they’re back at Yuta’s place with a snap of his fingers,  _ just like that _ .

“What are you doing Tuesday?” The words gush out of Sicheng’s mouth faster than he can think them through. He’s out of breath already, stops tugging at Yuta’s shirt to work on his pants instead.

“Tuesday? What am I doing on Tuesday?” Confusion is thick in Yuta’s voice as his wandering hands still and he lets himself be freed of his clothes.

“Yeah.”

“Huh.”

Sicheng bursts out laughing, genuinely amused at the absurdity of everything that’s led him to this point, blushing from arousal and big strong  _ like _ . He plops down onto the bed and hides his face. “Yeah, I shouldn’t have asked.” The panicked confusion heavy in Yuta’s expression is fresh behind his eyelids, and gets another laugh out of him, loud and light. “Sorry.”

Yuta crawls over Sicheng on the bed, dragging his palms up Sicheng’s side as he goes. He pries Sicheng’s hands away from his face to cup his cheek. “I’m not…doing anything Tuesday.”

It takes somewhere between forty-five minutes to an eternity before Sicheng arrives at Green Point Park. He’s sitting ramrod straight on a purple bench with his hands folded in his lap. It’s 11 AM Tuesday so the only children in the park are toddlers and their sitters. And Sicheng and Jeno, in a not-all-that-dissimilar situation. Jeno sits beside him with his legs crossed at the ankles, arms folded across his chest, staring out at nothing. He’s here for all kinds of support, but Sicheng can tell he’s nervous, too. A few minutes pass, and Sicheng is startled out of a daze as Jeno springs up to allow a slow-moving man, looking to be around seventy years old, to take his seat. Standing now, Jeno hastily smooths down his cream nurse uniform then says to Sicheng very sweetly, “I’ll go get us some drinks,” and points to the little stall not far from them. He directs a close-lipped, polite smile at the other man, a kind of  _ you’re welcome _ gesture, and walks off.

Sicheng takes in a deep breath and smooths down the curled over hem of his windbreaker. His own nerves are acid searing through his stomach. Too loud and jittery, he vomits out, “Well! What do you think?”

The man laughs like it hurts to; each chortle interjected with a raggedy inhalation. He’s grey-haired entirely. He’s got kind of a long face, the strong outline of a jaw when he tilts his head back in laughter disappears when his amusement quiets into a smile. That smile. Sicheng thinks he could know it anywhere.

“Much of the same,” the man says, in a new voice, trailing his gaze down to Sicheng’s neon yellow jacket and his hands clutched at the hem of it. He reaches out to stroke his thumb across the dark freckles on Sicheng’s face. “This is new.”

For a second, Sicheng tries to see himself as Yuta must see him now. There’s a lot of saggy, creased skin that kind of drags his face down, and he’s probably closer to eighty than Yuta is, but he thinks he’s making it work.

“This is the weirdest thing,” Sicheng remarks in quiet awe after they’ve been staring at each other for a while.

Yuta says, “It’s Tuesday,” and they both laugh, disbelieving.

It’s not that awkward, sitting on a bench in a park he’s never been to before, next to a man he’s simultaneously known a while and just met for the first time.

“You’re quiet.”

“I have much less to hide behind now,” Yuta says like a joke, but the honesty is there, and Sicheng can relate. “I still can’t believe this.”

“Why?”

“Well, you were hiding from me for weeks and then you weren’t.”

Sicheng twists in his seat to face Yuta without having to turn his head. The truth isn’t given an awful long time to swell between them. “Don’t look at me like I have any answers.”

“And now here we are,” Yuta muses, watching in amusement as Sicheng slowly comes back into himself, into their dynamic. “In real life.”

“Underwhelming?”

Yuta shakes his head. “Not at all. I meant what I said. You’re beautiful.”

“That’s my Jeno—I mean, my caretaker. Jeno. I call him my roommate sometimes,” Sicheng chuckles with fresh nerves. He points to where Jeno is crouching by the drinks stall, still, sans drinks. He’s playing around with the fluffy white dog of a woman standing in queue.

Yuta coughs hard a few times and Sicheng doesn’t hesitate to scoot closer and rub his back reassuringly. A lot of the nerves melt into concern. “Are you okay?” Sicheng asks, rubbing circles into the nape of Yuta’s neck. Yuta shakes his head, confirming the answer Sicheng had already assumed.

“I plan to retire to San Junipero,” Yuta says through shallow breaths.

“The trial was that good, huh?”

Yuta is serious now. “Soon.”

“I don’t really know how that whole ‘crossing over’ process works. I forbade Jeno from telling me.”

“So, the trial is four months, right? 5 hours a week on a Saturday. That’s  _ no time _ if you think about it. Well, in my perspective, at least. You don’t have to finish the trial to cross over, either. You just have to say,  _ okay, I’m ready _ , sign some papers, get euthanized and your subconscious is uploaded to the iCloud. For however long you want.”

Sicheng rolls his eyes, “Sounds like heaven.” After a brief silence, he continues, “It’s supposed to be therapeutic, isn’t it? A virtual reality system that recreates the past, so we feel nostalgic for happy memories, good times, to ease the anxieties of being closer to death than we’ve ever been. I heard they think it can help with dementia, too. It’s nostalgia therapy.”

“You sure you don’t know the process?”

“It’s just my thoughts I’ve been having. I don’t know if any of it’s worked, really,” Sicheng drops his gaze to where their hands lie intertwined in Yuta’s lap. “There are some things that hurt a lot, still.” Sicheng straightens up then scoots closer until they’re hip to hip. He smooths down Yuta’s hair and takes a deep, grounding breath. “No. Okay let’s not do this. Tell me about you. I don’t think I’ve ever asked.”

Yuta smiles but it’s not the one Sicheng likes; a hollow, emotionless thing. “I haven’t had much of a life.”

“That can’t be true.”

“You could think that,” Yuta says, nodding. For a long while he sits, pensive, and Sicheng tours his gaze around the park to give Yuta some privacy with his thoughts. A little way away, a pair of twins are playing a virtual reality action game. They’re seated perfectly still across from each other, heads tipped back—as if asleep—though their eyes stare wide and unblinking into the middle distance, pupils a milky grey. On each of their right temples there’s a small, silver sensor that transports a bit of their consciousness into the virtual reality where everything feels, tastes, smells, looks and sounds just like  _ real  _ life. It’s the same coin-sized sensor that takes Sicheng to San Junipero.

Sicheng looks back at Yuta to find his eyes already on him. They’re so close, noses nearly touching. They must look so crazy to Jeno. “I tried to be straight my whole life,” Yuta says, slowly. “I did everything I was supposed to do and lived for everyone but myself. I know I maybe come across as… self-assured and straightforward, but. Honesty hasn’t always come very easy to me.”

“You have a very convincing face,” Sicheng half-jokes in reflex to Yuta kind of rocking his world. He tries to imagine Yuta as anyone other than the guy he’s seen over the past few weeks and can’t. But that had been mere days to the decades Yuta has had to fabricate facets of his life. No comparison. The fact that Sicheng knows very little about Yuta, and vice versa, should please him. It should sate that thing he feels, stronger than lust, a dozen strings. It should make walking away from San Junipero at the end of his trial as painless as he had anticipated. No ‘crossing over’ into a simulation—a coin-sized replica of what he’d already had and loved and lost—just life then death.

“Could I kiss you?” Sicheng breathes into the tiny space between them. Yuta responds by leaning forward, touching lips to lips. It’s sweet and chaste, their first kiss but also not. All the same feelings are there, times ten. Stronger than lust, a dozen strings. Big strong  _ like _ . Sicheng caresses Yuta’s face in his palms, feeling the soft soft skin as he leans back to give Yuta two, three, four quick pecks through growing smiles.

“This is a public park.”

With a laugh, Sicheng pulls away from the kiss and takes the proffered ice cream tub out of Jeno’s hand.

“Are you going to hound me about this forever?”

Jeno smiles with a wink, and that’s a yes.

When Sicheng graduated high school, Donghyuck was fifteen and almost just as impassioned to leave. At eighteen, Sicheng was half his mother’s age. They’d planned for him a little party of cousins and aunt’s aunts and uncles and some of Sicheng’s closest friends who had stuck from primary through high school. Donghyuck was not invited so much as the gathering was planned around his presence—the party flowed between Sicheng’s house and Donghyuck’s, separated only by the wall that ran through the middle of them, but even that they shared. The only way to tell the two houses apart from the outside was by paint. In Sicheng’s backyard his dad had built up a high vibracrete wall between the two properties with a door-sized gap in the middle to soften the severity of the vibracrete. Sicheng and Donghyuck grew up close from around the time Donghyuck started primary school. They’d walked to and back together every day, and Sicheng had felt no particular feelings of resentment to being appointed the younger boy’s guardian. He’d taken it on as he’d taken on everything else up until that point: with the indifference and learned maturity of an only child.

“Come here,” Donghyuck curls a hand around Sicheng’s wrist. “Come see.”

Two nights before Sicheng moved into university residence and two years before Donghyuck’s accident, they have the going-away party. Sicheng is passed around the living room like the cheese and nuts platter, going from relative to family friend for a few kind words and sometimes a hard kiss on the cheek. He is slated to break a generational curse by being the first person in his family to get into university.

They stand before the floor-length mirror in Donghyuck’s room—a real gaudy thing. Gold-framed with small lightbulbs across the top, inherited from his grandmother. Sicheng has remembered it a dozen different ways over the years. Him an Donghyuck fit neatly into the reflection, pressed together side by side. He saw two people at different points in their lives, but no doubt, with Donghyuck’s booksmarts and guts, he’d echo this same path as he had many others in Sicheng’s life.

They held similar stances on almost everything, and it hadn’t taken much pondering for teenage Sicheng to convince himself that their same tastes were due to a kind of hero-worship on Donghyuck’s part. What Sicheng hadn’t known—standing there, absorbed in his own reflection, the face he’d take with him to college—was that Donghyuck was on the cusp of knowing something fundamental about himself.

Of course, Sicheng has had many moments since for painful retrospection. No matter how much he misremembers, whether it be the colour of the mirror in Donghyuck’s room he’d never been able to grow out of, or the way the lightbulbs were arranged on it, Sicheng doesn’t think he could forget the words he spoke that night. With fervent desperation, Donghyuck had clutched Sicheng’s wrist as hard as the aunties had when they were congratulating him, an unspoken plea and command heavy between them. Donghyuck stared at the mirror’s reflection, into Sicheng’s eyes.

“Look at us. Look closely at our faces next to each other and don’t ever forget that we are best friends.”

Memories feel too tangible here. They creep up his back like gusts of icy wind, and no matter how hard he tries to resist, he finds himself following the stitch of rememory along its various seams and loose threads until they all taper off into recent knowledge that make up fact. Nostalgia therapy—memories of the past feel so tangible Sicheng thinks he could gather the tapering threads and rip them off with his teeth.

It’s Saturday late afternoon, overcast and darkening quickly, quarter-to a summer storm. The stern north wind pushes at one arm of a waterlogged tyre swing like a playground bully repeatedly shoving your shoulder, occasionally twisting the thick chain connecting to the bar above. When the chains of each arm untangle, the half-tyre spins wildly, shaking out the water collected in the seat. Sicheng catches it in a dozen drops against his back. He hasn’t been to this park before, never even passed it on any of his long meandering walks from the beach to the Quagmire or into town. All it’s got is the swing and a big rusting slide. Sicheng had wanted to open his eyes here—not  _ this  _ park necessarily, but any park. He’d thought of Green Point Park and the milky-eyed twins. Then he’d opened his eyes here, to the skeleton of a playground. Sicheng lies back next to the swing. He turns his ear to the ground and smells the fresh earth and green of grass.

Taeyong loves the bowl. So much so that his nose turns red and his eyes water as he gives Sicheng a rare, tender look. Nevermind that Sicheng had completely forgotten about it, and that Yuta had been the one to bring it, wrapped carefully and obviously in newspaper with a little tag saying,  _ from Sicheng and Yuta _ .

When he opens the door, Yuta is already smiling. Across the threshold, holding the bowl on one arm, Yuta stands in conversation with a stranger.

“This is Doyoung,” he says, voice light like he’d just been laughing about something and the humour hasn’t yet subsided, “Taeyong said I could bring a friend.”

Sicheng sucks in the inside of his cheek to stop himself from smiling at nothing. He steps back to let them in. “I’m Sicheng, hi.”

Doyoung stands at about Yuta’s height, with short black hair and a suspicious face.

“So I’ve heard,” Doyoung says. He hands Sicheng a bottle of white wine he’d been cradling on his arm like a newborn. “A birthday gift.”

Ten and Kun walk in not much later, squabbling quietly, ignoring everyone else. They squeeze with practiced ease into the big single-seat recliner. Ten makes broad arm movements in the space between them. Carrying a stack of vinyl, Johnny emerges from his room and moves towards the record player.

“Johnny,” Sicheng pulls him aside by his long black tie, lightly knotting it in the process. Johnny whines about it but keeps sorting through the stack of records in hand. “Johnny, this is Doyoung, Yuta’s friend.”

Frowning, Johnny glances up and then back down, “oh hey Kun, long time no see.” Kun throws over a half-hearted  _ hey you _ , then turns his back to the room and drags his hands over his face as Ten rants in a hushed voice. Sicheng yanks on Johnny’s tie hard and Johnny looks up proper, dragging his gaze up and over Doyoung’s form. “Hey, how’s it?” He smiles easily at him. Doyoung nods a couple times with a small, tight smile and says, “yeah. Um, hey.”

Warm fingers scratch lightly through the strands at the back of Sicheng’s head. His hair’s still wet from the grass at the park. Sicheng leans into the touch, turns to meet Yuta’s gaze. They exchange soft smiles. Not shy but knowing. Sicheng takes Yuta’s hand in his, brings it up to his lips for a feathery kiss then leads them into the kitchen to allow Johnny and Doyoung to keep checking each other out, pretending not to check each other out.

“No one else got me anything,” Taeyong says through sniffles. “Thank you, guys, really. I know it’s a joke, but still. I can’t remember when last I got presents.”

“Old saps, all of you.” Donghyuck walks up to inspect the bowl and the name tag. After reading it, he mouths it out exaggeratedly, like it’s a question— _ from Sicheng and Yuta? — _ and gives Sicheng a comical look, eyes bulging, eyebrows raised, and mouth pulled all the way down. He looks almost impressed. Sicheng makes a show of hassling Donghyuck about it, ruffling his hair and calling him a scamp.

“How did you all meet?” Yuta asks over dinner.

“Ten, Kun and I… is it embarrassing to say we met in a nursing home? Whatever, I’m eighty today! I have no shame!” Taeyong exclaims but holds the backs of his cold hands up to his flaming cheeks all the same. “Sicheng says I shouldn’t measure my age in  _ real life  _ years anymore because I’ve passed over, but. I can’t just  _ forget  _ eighty whole years.”

Donghyuck, the cynic mouthpiece of the Donghyuck-Sicheng one-mind organism, says, “You don’t remember, like, half of it. You had dementia.”

“Whatever. I met Johnny and Donghyuck here. Sicheng was my uni roommate for three years.”

“Reunions are super rare here. And most real connections are fleeting, in any case.”

A jarring silver-meets-porcelain clink cuts through the room as Ten drops his cutlery in an X against the edge of his plate. “Kun says Britney Spears is in San Junipero.”

“I didn’t say that, I said our neighbour, Taeil, said he saw Britney Spears at the Quagmire.”

“You dirty fucking liar,” Ten points an accusing finger at his husband’s face. “Why would she be in San Junipero?”

Donghyuck pulls Sicheng’s hand into his lap. He pulls a slim black marker out of his pants pocket and begins writing big letters on Sicheng’s open palm.  **DID U & YUTA FU——**

Sicheng struggles out of Donghyuck’s tight grip on his wrist, smearing the ink in a long line across his palm. he covers the words in a fist. When he uncurls his fingers from his palm, there’s nothing there. He meets Donghyuck’s amused gaze, the playful shine in his eyes and mischievous smirk. Sicheng rolls his eyes, but that smile from earlier fights its way onto his face.

“Britney Spears is in San Junipero?” Sicheng asks.

With a longsuffering sigh, Kun resigns himself to intimate association with the story, “That’s what I heard.”

That erupts a whole new line of conversation. Sicheng mulls over an opinion before turning to Donghyuck to say it out loud before he can rethink it. Donghyuck is already staring at him. All traces of humour are gone from his face. A lot like dread freezes his features, as if he’s just remembered he had somewhere important to be twenty minutes ago. They lock eyes for a long time to the point where the moment becomes too far-removed from their setting. Sicheng tries lifting the corners of his mouth into a smile, but all he manages is a pathetic twitch on one side. Then Donghyuck shakes his head quickly and blinks back the tears collected along the rims of his eyes.

“Hey,” Warm breath fans over the back of Sicheng’s neck. “You good?” Yuta slips an arm loosely around Sicheng’s waist, offers a comforting intimacy just by being close.

_ Look closely at our faces next to each other and don’t ever forget that we are best friends. _

The words had felt so trivial at the time, childish in the way that Sicheng had been starting to think hanging out with a high schooler in university was.  _ Best friends _ , like they were  _ seven _ . But truth be told, Donghyuck had never really been able to outgrow that teenage naivety, not even in the shock exposure to San Junipero after decades-long sleep. He hadn’t gotten the chance at a  _ life _ . For a flash second, Sicheng considers stewing in a neat bubble of guilt, then immediately becomes frustrated for feeling guilty. No one else pays it any mind when Donghyuck pushes away from the table and walks calmly to his room. The group break away in little groups to sit on the sofas as Ten carries the dessert out, a fragrant peppermint tart.

Sicheng hesitates in between the living room and Donghyuck’s room. He decides on neither, takes Yuta’s hand and pulls him out the front door. They walk along the beach until Sicheng’s entire face is numb from cold. Sicheng sucks in a huge breath, keeps it in his cheeks for a while until he realizes how ugly he must look, then releases it in a loud gust. “You were saying how I’ve been avoiding you for weeks and then… I just stopped… I’m kind of, like…dying?” It’s by brute force Sicheng tears his eyes away from the soft sand at their feet up to Yuta’s knee, his wrist, then his face, somewhere right of his nose. Face softened by empathy; Yuta gives him a nod to continue.

“I—yeah. It’s not that ‘Meeting Someone New’ was one of my new year’s resolutions. More like…I was just riding out my time. I didn’t expect this— _ us _ . Like, not at  _ all _ . But.”  _ But what?  _ Sicheng has no idea.

“You deserve whatever you want.”

Sicheng’s voice turns fierce, “You don’t know that. Don’t say that.”

“Why not?”

Sicheng crouches into the sand. His arm stretches up to where his fingers are still laced with Yuta’s. “Donghyuck was in a coma for forty-three years,” Sicheng starts, trying to keep his breaths even. “I’d known him since he was five. A freak car accident when he was seventeen. My best friend gone, just like that. He hadn’t gotten a chance to graduate high school or go to university or just live a  _ life _ . The only way we could talk was through the CommBox when he was around thirty? Thirty-one? It read his brainwaves or something,” Sicheng sniffles into his sleeve. “The way he looked at me at that table… I thought,  _ he must think I’m bullshit _ .” He sniffs hard, but his nose runs anyway, salty just like his tears rolling onto his lip. “This isn’t—” chest aching with the force of a sob threatening to tear him right in half, Sicheng feels Yuta’s arms circle his frame. Yuta rocks him gently, awkwardly, as he tries sitting down flat on the sand. He pulls Sicheng between his widespread legs and holds him to his chest.

“I had a life,” Sicheng begins after a long while of letting the sound of waves lapping to shore slowly lull him to sleep. A whispered confession: “I had a long lumpy life and a husband and a daughter who didn’t get all of this. She got a coffin and a gravestone. At just forty years old she died in the same way Donghyuck could’ve. And here I am, greedy for a second chance. At what?  _ love _ ? It’s selfish and pathetic. How can I stay here? How do I… I don’t deserve this. There are people who do, but it’s not me.”

Yuta says nothing for a long time, a long long time. Sicheng feels so stuffed full of emotions he can’t even cry. Just lies there in Yuta’s arms, eyes wide and unblinking, watching sand shift in the cutting breeze.

One week before Sicheng’s trial ends, he’s lying naked in a lover’s embrace.

“And you? What do you think of dying?” Yuta traces his thumb along Sicheng’s temple. They’re face to face. They blink at the same time.

Like the dozens of questions before—requests into the privacies of Sicheng’s long years as Yuta randomly thinks them up, permission granted—Sicheng rolls it around his head like sticky candy, collecting all the words he wants to say.  _ It’s exciting,  _ he wants to say.  _ Never one thing, limitless and terrifying _ —because what makes it different from living? Basking in the warmth passing across and surrounding their bodies, Sicheng couldn’t tell you. Couldn’t count to three in the face of that sexy-shy smile, gentle and indulgent, but not promising anything. They’ve got time.

“Are you afraid of dying?” Yuta prompts, plainly and without any of that gloss-eye sympathy that Jeno tries concealing after Sicheng’s coughed so many times, he expects he’ll spit out slivers of lung.

“Now? Yes,” Sicheng answers truthfully. He holds Yuta’s soft gaze. He’s so incidentally beautiful; he just  _ has that face, _ and Sicheng is the only one freaking out about it. “You are looking at a man in the process of changing his mind.”

**Author's Note:**

> AAAA ThankU for reading this passion project of mine <333 I would love to hear ur thoughts!! Comments and kudos go straight to my heart.
> 
> BTW [this](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/56128552e4b0021af6794f77/1475572940453-CSYQHSCTX6FQ21NTTSYD/Madonna+06.jpg?content-type=image%2Fjpeg) is what Haechan wears on New Years Eve in 1987 if u wanna believe it


End file.
